Grasso acknowledges efforts made to forget Foibe massacres

Senate president says remember Second World War horrors

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(ANSA) - Trieste, February 10 - For too long, Italy has
tried to forget the terrible period in the country's history
after the Second World War when thousands of Italians were
slaughtered by Yugoslav partisans, Senate Speaker Pietro Grasso
said Monday.

But in future, the country must remember what happened in
the gorges known as Foibe, he said during a visit to a national
monument established in memory of the massacres.

"We have to say that for too long, we have tried to forget
and this should not continue in the future," Grasso said at the
monument of the Foiba di Basovizza.

"This is the meaning of my presence here," he said during a
national day of remembrance established in 2004 to mark the
Foibe massacre and the forced exodus of Italians living in parts
of the former Yugoslavia.

It's believed that as many as 15,000 Italians were tortured
or killed by Yugoslav communists who occupied the Istrian
peninsula dating back to about 1943.

Many of the victims were thrown into the narrow mountain
gorges during anti-Fascist uprisings in the area.

The exact number of victims of these atrocities is unknown,
in part because Yugoslav forces destroyed local population
records to cover up their crimes.

The Foibe atrocities were for decades a divisive issue in
Italian politics, with right-wing politicians accusing the Left
of trying to airbrush the massacres out of history and focusing
exclusively on the crimes committed by Benito Mussolini's
Fascist regime.

But in recent years several centre-left politicians agreed
that the Foibe massacres constituted a brutal and neglected
episode in Italian history.